


Eeny Meeny Miney Mo

by jamborina



Category: Tiger King (TV), 킹덤 | Kingdom (TV 2019)
Genre: American-Raised Immigrant Language Struggles ayyyyy, Bartender!Seo-bi, Chaebol!Lee Chang, ChaebolWrangler!Beom-pal, Don't Keep Apex Predators As Pets, Ex-Marine!Yeong-shin, Fucking American Wildlife Laws, HaplessManager!Beom-pal, Influencer!QueenConsortCho, Inspired by Tiger King, Korean Adoptee!Yeong-shin, Language Barrier, Las Vegas, M/M, Paramedic!Seo-bi, WildlifeRescuer!Yeong-shin, Yeong-shin & Seobi are Roommates, ofc this was gonna happen, they came out at the same time and BOTH have tigers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-13
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:41:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25883005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jamborina/pseuds/jamborina
Summary: ...catch a tiger by its toe.Yeong-shin's job gets wildly out of hand. Chang needs to cancel his credit cards. Beom-pal locks himself in a shed. Seobi strongly considers implanting a tracker in her roommate. Beom-il does as Frat Bros do and Cho Hye-jin is just living her best life, collateral damage be damned.(aka why yeong-shin is a tiger rescuer sent to a Vegas mansion where the Queen (Consort) of Insta has unleashed a great danger - at least this time it's not zombies - and where he gets a meet cute story of the ages.)
Relationships: Prince Lee Chang/Yeong-shin
Comments: 5
Kudos: 12





	Eeny Meeny Miney Mo

The hot Nevada sun baked the dashboard of Yeong-shin’s truck, littered with old takeout pamphlets and business cards. A secondhand gift from his adopted parents, it had seen him through thick and thin. From his baby brother’s high school math club, to the dark hours before dawn at a Ranger bootcamp, to the airport parking lot where he shipped off to Afghanistan and then for his return, half-broken and bitter.

As much as he hated and loved the old rust bucket, he could respect the fact that it was still kicking.

He checked GPS once more and cursed. Out of signal, again.

Without looking, he whapped its side, listening for its far too familiar irritated beeps as it recalibrated. Huffing out a long sigh, he slid his aviators, on blocking out the dry summer light, and tsked. Even his electronics were giving him shit nowadays.

The tiger rescuer ran a hair through his shoulder length hair, leaning against the window of his car. Miles and miles of deserted Nevada road stretched out ahead, distant mountains shaded a dusky lavender. He could see why someone would want to live out here. It was stunning.

The Nevada Wildcat Rescue had received reports of tigers being held in a luxury mansion down south, only barely within the limits of the admittedly lax laws. The owners were old foreign money, and just as arrogant as their history would imply. His boss had been itching to slap them with a lawsuit for _literal decades_ now.

And, the wobbly Instalive video from the night before had been the perfect chink in their armor he’d been searching for.

A tiger, prowling behind a plexiglass shield, as drunken revelers smacked the glass and cheered. The pulse of bass heavy electronic music in the background. The cat looked stressed, agitated, and Yeong-shin could relate. It appeared to be a generic breed at first sight – legal, barely—but then, in the light of a camera flash, the distinct crest, the dark stripes of a pure Siberian tiger.

Rare. Exotic. And very, _very_ illegal to own in the magnificent U.S. of A.

Yeong-shin grinned, checking that the notarized writ to search and seize any endangered animals was still safely stashed in the passenger seat. Next to his repurposed seabag, beaten and well-worn, and his rifle case, propped up against the seat. The plain brown plastic was scuffed up but covered with stickers. Seobi’s pink ribbon for breast cancer awareness week, a shaky street map of Kabul, the cheesy logo of his little brother’s college robotics club.

His GPS bleeped insistently again, and he glanced at it. Up on the right, huh?

He looked out across parched yellow-brown fields and, yup, there it was. Green, green grass.

Yeong-shin turned his busted-up truck onto the smooth asphalt of a private drive, twitching in distaste at the expanse of lawn, perfectly trimmed in a diamond pattern. The sheer volume of water that had to go into keeping something so useless intact…

Well, he thought, eyebrow twitching as the driveway stretched onwards a mile… two miles of green green grass… they must have plenty to spend. Perhaps the enclosure would be better than the half dozen muddy chain-link enclosures he’d seen in the past. Perhaps it had enough room for the tigers to play, to run.

He pulled in behind a bright red Maserati, irritation mounting as he looked out across the truly gargantuan residence. He could see an expansive backyard, the blue of a pool through the greenery of a small tropical paradise that looked like it had been plucked from a designer Amazonian forest and plopped in the middle of the Nevada desert.

Atrocious.

Yeong-shin paused at the sight of security cameras, and then frowned. No light, no movement. In fact—he swung out of his car to get a better look—it almost looked like the wires had been cut. Weird.

He stepped forward and then flinched as an intricate marble fountain flared to life, cued by motion sensors.

 _For fucks sake_. He grabbed his shit and, on second thought, the tranq gun stored in the boot. He jumped out of the back of his truck, thick soled boots landing with a heavy thump and a puff of dust.

_The tigers deserved better than this bullshit._

_***_

Chang blinked blearily awake as the bed jostled. The pillow was sticky beneath his face and his mouth tasted like something fuzzy and sick had died in it. His button down must be wrinkled to hell and back, and he patted it down only to find it unbuttoned down to his navel. The recently promoted Chief Operating Officer of the largest e-shopping brand in South Korea fuzzily stared down at a string of numbers scrawled across his abs and looked up.

“Hey hyung.” Beom-il swiped Chang’s wallet off the side table and fished for a credit card. “Lost my wallet. Mind buying breakfast for the girls’n’me?”

“What.” Chang croaked, then winced. His breath smelled worse than it tasted, and it tasted _pretty fucking bad_.

Cho Beom-il, the bastard, tossed his wallet on the bed beside him and took a pull from his juul.

America had been good to his childhood ‘friend’—from a certain point of view. Between an international business major, a diehard fraternity, and all the wealth and excess of the Western coast, he was shaping up to truly shock his parents.

Chang couldn’t _wait_ for Chuseok.

“Chill, dude.” His host muttered around a slim matte black stick. “There’s a bathroom and shit around here. Ask the housekeeper. I don’t know.”

Chang squinted at him, trying to string together blurry memories. There had been a few clubs, beat pulsing through sticky bar floors and elegant lounges, with flashes of the cold starry Las Vegas sky between.

Beom-pal, already bright red from the liquor, flushing darker under the stern glare of a female bartender with a short bob till Chang wrestled him away with an apology. Then a limo back to the house, a girl clinging to his side as he gently tried to extract himself, itchy and uncomfortable.

A… a DJ? Flown in on helicopter to the backyard, filled with catered food and a pool and…. a private zoo? And that’s where he’d lost the plot, somewhere between hazy strobe lights and cold amber whiskey.

“Beom-pal?” He eventually asked.

His last memory of Beom-il’s younger cousin was him, sitting in the shallow end of the pool, a hamburger in one hand and a bottle of Swiss spring water the size of his head in the other. The pudgy, nervous man had been a reluctant addition to his branch of the company three years ago, as a favor to a family friend, and had bloomed into a surprisingly competent manager since.

Beom-il shrugged, inputting his information with nimble fingers and Chang resolved to cancel the card as soon as he could feel his face again. He flopped back onto the bed, tossing an arm over his eyes.

“His car’s still here.”

Chang grimaced, not even looking up.

“Let me know if you wanna hit the beach, dude.” Saluting a goodbye from the doorframe, Beom-il promptly vanished downstairs. The door shutting just as a round of giggles erupted from somewhere out of sight.

He lay there for a few long moments— maybe an hour, he wasn’t counting— and then rolled out of bed, feeling sticky and out of sorts.

A shower. He swallowed and winced. A shower, a toothbrush and coffee.

He would try thinking again after that.

*****

Beom-pal woke himself up with his own snore, coughing and sputtering back to consciousness in the warm shadow of the poolside tents, perched precariously between two lounge chairs.

An empty plastic bottle clattered to the concrete next to him as he flailed frantically into a more stable position. A breeze whispered through the palm trees above him and he finally caught himself, lurching up to a seat and looking around.

Two slices of pizza to his right, a bottle of Advil and water to his left, and he snapped his fingers, looking to the sky in gratitude. Thank god for household staff.

The catering tables had long since been cleared away, but empty bottles, chrome confetti and wayward balloons littered the lawns. The black DJ booth and LED screens stood abandoned and strangely small in the bright light. A large inflatable flamingo and rainbow cloud bobbed cheerily in the pool and Beom-pal considered his options.

He _felt_ pretty good, if confused. Couldn’t remember much past the first two shots of vodka, but that was typical. He yawned, stretching luxuriously before snagging a piece of pizza to munch on and collecting the water and painkillers.

 _He_ didn’t need them, but Chang should be around here somewhere, and he always had _killer_ hangovers. Hopefully, his boss wouldn’t be too grumpy, but Beom-pal could never really predict what he was thinking. At least, when they weren’t at work.

Beom-pal hopped to his feet, scratching his stomach.

While the young chaebol, heir to the infamous Lee Conglomerate, was ridiculously accomplished and came with an attitude to match, the perfect idol premise kind of fell apart once he left the office. Poor guy couldn’t parse a normal social interaction without hidden motivations and powerplays if you gave him a script to read off of.

He padded past the shadow of potted plants, a few upturned chairs, only to jolt to a stop. Bouncing back hastily, Beom-pal yelped at the searing heat of sunbaked pavement under his bare feet.

“Ah, ow, oh my _god_ , ow.” He hesitantly put his foot down, whining at its tenderness. He looked longingly over the simmering stretch of concrete, to the house and kitchens full of food within. There had to be another way to the house.

Perhaps? He peered round the side and, there, the path that came around to the downstairs kitchen, the second pantry for catering staff. That would do.

Beom-pal hopped from stone to stone, blessedly cool under the shade of the trellis, purple and blue flowers curling down on grasping vines. He passed free roaming peacocks, a pasture of llamas, an empty field with the horse stables in the distance and then, as he turned the corner—

“Cousin?” He frowned, because that person, there by the gate was Hye-jin, the youngest of all the Cho cousins. Her well-moisturized, dermaplaned babyface hid a cutthroat entrepreneur and she ruled as both a terrifying despot and beloved social media influencer, all in one pint-sized package with a brand deal.

The girl looked back from where she stood by the gate, blowing a hot pink bubble that nearly covered her entire face. Oversized Gucci sunglasses hid her eyes, her expression. She was small on most days, but her blue sundress made her look practically doll-like, between the ruffles and flared hem.

“Oppa.” The honorific was so dryly venomous, Beom-pal felt his insides shrivel automatically.

“Ahhh.” He trailed off. “I’ll just…”

She ignored him to finish inputting a password into the lock, which beeped open with an ominous series of muffled thuds.

“…go.” Beom-pal hesitated, taking a closer look. That was… “The tiger enclosure?”

“You still have your passport, right?” She asked obliquely, tugging the lock free. “The Chairman—” And what a weird way to refer to your own dad. “—booked my brother and I’s flights for today, but yours is tomorrow. Check your itinerary.”

His frown deepened in confusion before he caught himself, patting his forehead to smooth the wrinkles out. Nope, not allowed, not on this face. He already resembled a sad puppy when he frowned— he didn’t need it etched into his face.

“What itinerary?”

She glanced back at him, and he froze like a mouse before a snake. “Your English has gotten better.” Her glossy lips twitched in something that could perhaps, in another lifetime, be called a smile. “Just make sure to talk to the lawyers before you say anything, yes?”

Hye-jin swung the heavy door open and dusted her hands clean. She tossed her braid over her shoulder and headed back to the house, designer flip flops smacking against the pavement.

And Beom-pal was left staring, slackjawed and flabbergasted, as a pair of tigers twitched their heads to focus on him, only a few meters past the very open doorway.

Beom-pal was backing away before he consciously registered the fact. The bottle of painkillers and water clattering to the ground, abandoned, as he skidded backwards. His single braincell chasing its tail in a perpetual cycle of _what the fuck what the fuck what the **fuck**._

He tripped, falling backwards into damp mulch and flower bushes, and let out an involuntary shriek.

A curious chirrup, the pad of hefty paws alongside the click of claws, came from the path beyond and his fear was overwhelming. He pushed further into the bushes only to hit something solid, plastic, hollow.

Beom-pal looked up to see a small storage shed and could have cried in relief, reaching up to scrabble ineffectually for the handle. He half-rolled half-collapsed into the dark shed and slammed the door behind him, flipping the lock with shaky hands.

_What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck._

He scrambled for his phone, nearly dropping it in his haste and dialed out 1-1-2. “Fuckfuckfuck, oh my god, she’s finally gone insane, I fucking knew it. It’s all the sociopathy and social media, oh fuck. Do it for the… what do the kids even…. _Tik Tok????_ But why _tigers_???” Something bumped against the side of the shed and he whimpered, hanging on to his phone with both hands as the ringing stretched on. “Oh my _god,_ I’m gonna die.”

“911 operator, what’s your emergency?”

“Hello?? Yes! Oh my GOD, my-cousin-set-the-tigers-free-please-help-me-I-don’t-wanna-diiiiiieeee.”

*** 

Seobi tied her hair back with quick, efficient movements from where she was strapped into the back of the ambulance. She stretched her neck, still feeling vaguely achy from her shift at the nightclub the evening before. Some foreign guy, red as a firetruck, had _very poorly_ flirted with her and promptly forgotten his credit card at her station.

Tourists.

She shook her head at the memory. He had enough besotted focus to scrawl out a mostly coherent love letter, but not enough to pick up his own card sitting literally five inches to the left of it.

The siren wailed above, as they raced along the highway. The ambulance jerked suddenly to the left and she braced herself against the cot as the cab rumbled off the speedway over the rougher concrete of the exit ramp.

“Dan-i!” She shouted, as Sandra, the other EMT, tightened her seatbelt with a chuckle.

“Yea, yea, yea!” He slid the window between the compartments open. “Be careful, I gotcha, but Sis—” He flashed her a grin, all sun-tanned confidence and youth. “Dispatch said the guy had _tigers_ on the loose.”

The quiet medic froze. “Tigers?”

“Yea, it’s the mansion down south by the private bay, you know the one.” He waved a hand, turning back to the road. “Big old lawn. Half the green earth grubheads in California out for his blood.”

“Ah.” Seobi unbuckled herself as they turned – swerved, really—onto an emptier road.

“Careful, dearie.” Sandra stretched out her arms, raising her eyebrows in surprise as Seobi scooted to the front of the cab. “What’s this about?”

“Just a call.” She muttered, pulling out her cell phone and hurriedly flipping to her most recent contacts. She held the phone to her ear as she looked out the front to the stretch of Nevada desert.

A red Maserati, overfull with people, sped past the ambulance with a throaty purr, heading in the opposite direction. It was followed quickly by a sleek black Lincoln with tinted windows.

She pursed her lips and waited, gut sinking with every ring.

Nothing.

She felt a muscle in her jaw twitch and tried again. And again.

It was only on the fourth call, when she was contemplating just leaving her wayward roommate to his fate, that Yeong-shin picked up.

“Seobi?” Irritated and absentminded in the way he got when he was fixed on a target, Seobi brushed it aside. Hefted herself up so she could peer through the window at the address of their destination.

“Where did you go this morning?” She demanded, remembering how he had strolled out the door with a self-satisfied grin and eco-friendly thermos of coffee. “What was the address?”

“What?”

“ _Tell me where you are._ ”

“I’m at _work_ , Seobi.” His tone slid to confusion, the audio rasping as he brushed against the mike. “Where else would I be?”

“ _Goddammit_ , Yeong-shin.” Her outburst startled Dan-I and the ambulance veered sharply across the divider till he got it back under control with a muttered curse and a startled glance back at her.

“Fuck, ok!” He responded, surprised. “It’s the mansion after exit 23. Something like… 100 Han—”

“Hanyang Place.” She breathed.

“Yeah…” Yeong-shin paused. “Seobi, is everything alri—”

“The tigers are loose.”

“ _What_.”

“ _The tigers are loose._ ” She emphasized. “Yeong-shin, they dialed 911. Police and animal control and medical have all been called in. Get back to your car and wait.”

“Ah….” A short pause. “Well.”

***

Yeong-shin stood stock still, every muscle frozen in vigilant wariness as he stared back at the massive tiger in front of him.

“Might be a bit late for that.” He murmurs. “Tiger’s here.”

There’s a clatter on the line and distant shouting before Seobi comes through again. “Just stay calm.”

“I _am_ calm.” Yeong-shin felt the familiar prickle of adrenaline flooding his veins, his heartbeat tripling as he tightened his grip on the bolt cutters in hand. _At the very least._ He mused. _He’d confirmed it was a true Siberian._

And, damn, the creature was gorgeous.

Yeong-shin shifted his weight, avoiding eye contact as he ticked off the markers: around 6 feet in length with large skull prominences, so probably a male juvenile. Beautiful healthy coat, clear yellow eyes, smooth movement and no visible signs of illness or injury.

Everything he could ever want to see and yet he’d prefer to see it on the other side of a very tall, very strong fence. _Fuck_.

Excruciatingly carefully, he started shuffling backwards, eyes on the creature’s front paws as he untied the flannel at his waist. The tiger chuffed, unconcerned and resumed investigating a discarded pizza box.

Yeong-shin suddenly became aware of Seobi yelling over the phone.

“Hey. I’m here.” He said calmly, watching the tiger’s ears flick in his direction briefly. “I’m going to put you in my pocket, okay?”

“ _Yeong-shi—”_ Her voice faded as he slipped the phone into his front pocket, still shuffling backwards by inches as his mind raced. There had been a trellis when he’d turned the corner. A metallic art feature built into the wall with a riot of green vines and pink flowers.

Tigers weren’t great climbers, and this one seemed more well-fed and curious than aggressive and hungry. With a scrap of luck…

Yeong-shin balled up his flannel and threw it to the side, watched as the tiger’s gaze snapped onto it. Still creeping backwards, he took off his Dodgers baseball hat, a gift from his brother, with steady hands.

Like Atalanta and the golden apples, he thought, dropping the precious hat. Theoretically, it could distract the tiger and delay him long enough for Yeong-shin to get away. Of course, it's not like he or any of the other gamekeepers had much of a chance to practice. Especially with unknown tigers.  
  
He felt his boot hit gravel and reached back, feeling cold stone. The ranger turned the corner backwards, eyes on the tiger as it loped over to paw at the shirt. Maybe it smelled the barbeque from last night. Maybe it just smelled human.

He wasn’t waiting to find out.

Yeong-shin risked a brief scan of the surrounding area, the lush forest now more dangerous than irritating. Nothing in sight, but with multiple tigers on the property and their uncanny ability to hide, that meant nothing. He moved faster, keeping his eyes up as he reached back blindly until he hit waxy leaves and metal struts.

 _Thank fuck._ Skin prickling, Yeong-shin paused, sent up a brief prayer and spun around to climb the wall.

The metal warped beneath him, screeching in protest, but holding firm as he threw himself upwards, bodily climbing the structure in moments that felt like minutes. Pink flowers petals rained down on him and he sputtered, shaking petals free from his hair and face. His gun case clattered against his back, jarring against his bad shoulder and he gritted his teeth, persevering through. Yeong-shin’s thoughts skittered away, focused on the next ledge, the next grip, the sound below him. And finally, instead of metal, his hand found a stone ledge.

He looked up.

A balcony, built into the building, and that meant a door, an entrance to the house. Even if he had to break in, it would be better than waiting out here.

Yeong-shin hooked his other hand on the stone floor of the balcony and, in one swift adrenaline-assisted pull, muscled his way up to clutch the metal railing and flipped over it into a crouch, panting.

He staggered to his feet, looking over the edge only to see two curious tigers staring back.

 _Fuck_. Yeong-shin slung his gun case across a glass coffee table, unhooking the latches to reveal the non-lethal air gun. She wasn’t his Darling, but reassembling her was instinctive enough. He carefully slotted a dart into the chamber, shouldering the weapon as he turned back to the edge.

The second tiger had disappeared, but the other was crouched at the edge of a huge hydrangea, stalking a _—_ was that a _peacock?_

Ugh, fuck it.

Yeong-shin shouldered the gun, a familiar calm washing over him as he lined the sights up with steady hands. A second of stillness– adjust for a slight wind from the east, the edge of the gun's range, the tiger settling into a crouch – and he pulls the trigger.

The tranq gun is near silent, so as not to stress the wildlife, but the loud exclamation of shock from behind him is not. He startles, but holds steady, waiting till he can see the bright red tassel clinging to the tiger's hide before he turns, still clutching his gun...

...to see a mostly naked, utterly _beautiful_ Korean man, wearing nothing but a towel, water droplets and a stunned look.

**Author's Note:**

> Ayyyyy, this is late. Hope you guys enjoy!


End file.
